New Approaches to Transparency Discussion

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New European approaches to transparency were the focal point of the Financial Club series discussion at MIM-Kyiv. Norvik Bank’s Mr. Oliver Ronald Bramwell, Chairman of the Bank’s Board together with Mr. Dmitry Kalmykov, VP for the International Business Line and Dr. Olexiy Aleksandrov, the Bank’s head of the Private Banking and MIM’s MBA and professor provided their expertise.

Mr. Kalmykov talked about the situation in the European banking. In particular, he mentioned introduction of the new provisions on transparency, such as PEP (politically exposed person) list expansion, legal definitions of the questionable agreements, and publicly accessible negative information about banks’ clients, beneficiaries and clients’ agreements. Thus, it is safe to assume that banks will adopt monitoring and controlling functions this year already.

Dr. Aleksandrov discussed the main capital markets drivers. Those drivers include central banks activities, the US economic situation, reportedly 3.6% annual growth of the global economy combined with China’s slowing dowing its growth rates, the Middle East and Korea situations, China – the US relationships and Brexit. He paid special attention to the Ukrainian macroeconomic trends, uncertainty and economic consequences of the Ukraine’s visa free travelling regime with the EU.

Crypto-currencies and blockchain were another focal point of the discussion. Mr. Bramwell discussed technicalities and underpinning philosophy of those new phenomena. In particular, bitcoins could not be voluntary issued, no banks-intermediaries participate in the transactions, confidentiality is guaranteed. Regardless of all those advantages many still believe bitcoins to be “dark money”.

The professional discussion was complemented by the lottery of the book by Ms. Svitlana Aleksiyevych, the Noble Prize winner. The book was published by the Bank and was the main lottery prize.